Dismal: The polarization of climate debate depresses believers: The solution they all miss

It’s “depressing”, “hopeless” and “dismal”

The climate debate is more polarised than ever. David Roberts at Vox is very honest about the challenges believers face to solve the deep partisan political divide. But despite all the grants and funding to solve this problem, the experts miss the obvious. I explain below why polarization will solve itself. Indeed, all their best efforts to reduce polarization in the climate debate are creating the polarization. It takes a sustained effort and millions of dollars to keep a false belief alive.

Now Dunlap and McCright (along with Oklahoma State’s Jerrod Yarosh) have updated their study, giving usa fresh look at public opinion on climate change at the end of the Obama era.

The findings are dismal, if not very surprising:Polarization only accelerated after 2008, the gap between the parties is wider than ever, and the trend shows no sign of stopping.

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) scores politicians. It tracks the voting records of members of Congress. Way back in 1970 both sides of politics wanted to approve environmental legislation about equally.

Public opinion has a similar trend. Here are Gallup poll results since 1997. (The recent up-spike in Republican “belief” was recorded in March this year and is probably due to the record warmest US winter thanks to the El Nino. I expect that to revert to trend next year.)

…

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Feel the pain as experts hunt in vain to solve the split

The experts and paid up researchers are scratching their heads trying to think of everything to fix this. But they miss the most obvious solution completely:

Hopes for reducing polarization are mostly forlorn

There are three sources of hope for reducing polarization in the short term. Dunlap et. al. shoot them all down.

The first is education — better informing the public about climate science. The much-derided “information deficit model” has proven a failure in practice. “Two decades of news coverage and educational campaigns since 1997 have produced only modest increases in Americans’ belief in the reality and human cause of climate change, with gains among Democrats often offset by declines among Republicans,” the authors write.

After three decades of propaganda, more propaganda pushes skeptics away. Badgering people with the 97% consensus only reminds them of how pathetically political and unscientific this debate is. Faking it up to a 99% consensus makes it worse. The consensus message only works on those prone to “follow the herd” and those people have all been reached already.

The second is better “framing,” pitching climate to conservatives in terms more likely to appeal to their values — climate as a national security threat, or an economic opportunity, or a threat to God’s covenant. However, dozens of studies have found small or negligible effects from these strategies. “The evidence so far gives little basis for optimism,” they conclude.

Lipstick on a pig. The problem is the pig, not the lipstick.

The third is personal experiences with extreme weather events, which, it is often hoped, will drive home the reality of climate change. But what evidence exists shows that such experiences have little-to-no effect on climate beliefs, especially among committed partisans. People interpret their experiences through their preexisting worldviews. “Again,” Dunlap et. al. write, “the evidence thus far does not provide much support for optimism.”

Extreme weather events have no scientific justification as “proof” of man-made climate change. Believers are stooping to falsely and unscientifically preying on people’s innate tendency to find patterns which are not real. This is about as low as any science communicator can get, but despite scraping this barrel, believers can still not win.

The blindingly simple answer — why polarization will resolve itself

The good news for Dunlap, McRight, Roberts, etc is that polarization is going to resolve — but the lines are trending to zero, not 100.

Currently it’s taking a billion dollars of propaganda to keep the Democrat belief so high, so far from reality.

Reality will bite, and sooner or later the public will all realize that like the fear of Witches, the man-made climate crisis was overblown, exaggerated, based on poor data, badly managed and overrun with political self interest and confirmation bias.

When will the polarisation resolve? It depends on the US election:

”Whether, and how, individual Americans vote this November,” Dunlap et. al. write, “may well be the most consequential climate-related decision most of them will have ever taken.”

Trump would give voice to the part of the herd that is closer to reality (ie. observations by satellites, weather balloons, etc etc). As this side of the debate is finally aired, and funding is turned down for propaganda, the followers will gradually follow – and herd-thinkers will shift towards the new more dominant herd position. If Clinton wins, the propaganda will keep the tribal split alive for longer.

The researchers can always find faux scientificy reasons to support their own confirmation bias:

Skepticism toward climate change and hostility toward climate policy have been yoked to conservative identity. To reject them is to risk rejecting that identity and harming the social relationships that come with it. And most people have much stronger commitment to their core identity than they do to any individual political issue.

Just as skepticism has become yoked to conservative identity — hostility, namecalling and religious climate fervour have become yoked to Democrat identity.

What happens when scientists “stop reasoning like a scientist”?

Once an issue has been yoked to our core identities, we stop reasoning like scientists (gathering evidence, seeing where it leads) and start reasoning like lawyers (start with a conclusion, work backward to build a case). Yale psychologist Dan Kahan calls it“motivated reasoning”— “the unconscious tendency of individuals to process information in a manner that suits some end or goal extrinsic to the formation of accurate beliefs.” In this case, the “end or goal” is preserving commitments core to identity.

Dan Kahan, Dunlap and McCright are all their own case study in motivated reasoning. They simply cannot process the possibility that the groupthink is wrong. It mars all their research, stopping them from even considering the possibility that the “motivated” reasoning is a bigger badder problem on the side driven by irrational fear and herd behaviour and backed by gazillions of dollars.

As a former Green my motivated reasoning was to find evidence to support the theory of a man-made crisis, but the harder I looked the less I found. Some of us can overcome that confirmation bias. Why won’t psychologists research that?

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172 comments to Dismal: The polarization of climate debate depresses believers: The solution they all miss

Amazing that the realities of AGW/CC are so subverted by this absolute minority of so-called “sceptics”, just like the similar subversion of the harm from tobacco consumption. Follow the money to the lobby groups behind these fake theories and arguments and the motivation is obvious, the retention of big oil and big gas and big coal profits to the detriment of the planetary environment. Pity that there are so few of them game enough to put their science to the test of full independent review, gutless wonders who prey in doubt and offer little or nothing that stands the test of scientific rigour.

The correlation between tobacco and climate change is on par.
People, including users had known the danger of tobacco for years but farmers, bankers, insurance companies, tobacco companies and their lobbyists kept the tobacco is not so bad meme alive and politicians at bay.
People, including scientists know our climate has changed throughout history but green activists, bankers, insurance companies, renewable energy suppliers and manufacturers along with their lobbyists have kept the politicians chasing the save the earth meme and the climate null hypotheses from being considered the true starting point for climate science.

I’m going to declare an interest here: in the past I have explored for lithium-bearing pegmatite deposits so this, theoretically, should make me a supporter of the “climate change” orthodoxy perpetrated by the academic and government scientists who are dependent on government grants. The fact that I have explored for lithium in past years has not made one iota of difference in how I interpret data in relation to this issue. I am an avowed “climate sceptic” because my interpretation of the information available, particularly in the geological record, compels me to this conclusion. I don’t directly hold any shares in coal or oil/gas production companies.

I find that comparing climate scepticism to suppressing information on the harm from tobacco consumption is morally offensive and a very cheap tactic.

Forget the “morally” offensive angle, this just allows open-ended framing of language as reply. You can never win that fight.

The “analogy” with smoking is intellectually dishonest. Intellectual honesty is a genuine handicap for the AGW advocates and such people will never openly deal with direct empirical evidence.

You will also notice that sillyfilly has reversed the onus of proof (null hypothesis). There is a hypothesis that recent man-made emissions of CO2 are indirectly causing damaging climate change – the onus is to provide empirical evidence that this is so, not for others to have to prove it isn’t true. [Here's another analogy - Michael Jackson was the 2nd coming, now you prove he wasn't.]

But no matter how many inaccurate, pointless surveys are published, the sheer inertia of the conflict ensures there is no resolution. “Nurturing the planet” trumps any rational, logical examination; this permeates our entire public discourse now.

A friend had the opportunity ( by accident it turned out ) to witness the inner workings of a public bureacracy, and without mentioning names, the thing taht struck him was the anger that more wasnt done about climate change……

Now these people are highly educated, low level bureacrats, but in the “touchy feely industry” as he put it.

I guess my point is that some sort of collective hypnosis has taken place, and people seem to actually believe this stuff…I guess if youre basically institutionalized in a CAGW echo chamber, all you will hear will be “CAGW is the highest religion in the land”….

In 1976 I wrote the first actuarial paper to recommend smoker/non smoker rating of life insurance. My profession hated the idea and so did doctors. Then, the majority of actuaries and doctors smoked. However this rating system soon became universally applied in life insurance and now no actuary or doctor would question its logic. More recently I have written two papers drawing my profession’s attention to how natural forces external to Earth have major effects on climate, great earthquakes and large volcanic eruptions. The problem again is too many of my profession have a vested interest in CAGW (i.e. they are making money out of the scare campaign) so of course they hate the truth being pointed out to them. What I don’t understand is how I can both be a tobacco realist and a CAGW denier. Surely the accusers have misunderstood what actually happened in the late 1970′s. It was vested interests that tried to stop sensible insurance rating just as it is vested interests stopping the acceptance and appropriate insurance rating of natural events. However this can’t last much longer.

Haven’t thought about those books for years – my parents collected books and I remember the pictures of the boy who smoked (stunted and weedy) and the non-smoker who was taller, more robust and healthier.

True Gee Aye but it was highlighting the adverse health risks from smoking. Also, I recall from reading David Niven’s books, that Humphrey Bogart referred to cigarettes as coffin nails as he was dying from lung cancer. The link between cancer and cigarettes has been around for a long while.

No matter what I had been doing; if I had been a clerk in some store or an elected official or a research scientist, the skeptical position is the only one you can arrive at if you look critically at their case. Suppressing information and convoluting climate change skepticism with smoking are not even necessary to discuss. The climate change cause isn’t credible at face value. You need only do as you did and take a good look for yourself. None of their predictions has come true for the last 30 years. That kind of failure would relegate most who push doom and gloom propositions to the dustbin of history. But somehow climate change hangs on.

Sillyfilly hasn’t made an argument that you could believe since first appearing on this site.

sillyfilly, denier denier your pants are on fire. The only reality about AGW is that all predictions and modelling have failed. In true science when a theory has failed so many times it’s time to dump it and find another one to test. Go to it and come back when you have a new theory or else just go away and stop pretending you know anything about true science.

the retention of big oil and big gas and big coal profits to the detriment of the planetary environment.

Of course you probably realise that we have all seen something like your rant from mentally warped and twisted, hate filled,[ you do that "hate filled" bit rather well ] against anybody who doesn’t belong to the deep Green Cult or is that the Watermelon Cult, quite a number of times previously.

And I did have an opportunity to write a letter to our local regional paper a number years ago on this very subject of the creation of “detriment to the planetary environment” !

This is the letter and this is YOU, Silly Filly
————

SIR,
YET another tirade against the Iluka Resources sand mine recently appeared in your letters column!

It was, as usual, just a repeat of the greenie’s mantra ” The black cockies are bereft,” ” The trees are leaving the district,” and “The environment is rooned, again!”.
Perhaps I can put a different aspect forward.
An aspect which is never admitted by the green Eco-fascists [ fascism= total authoritarianism.] and is never discussed by the compliant media who publish any line of drivel promulgated by the greens, without challenge.

As a small boy, 60 years ago, during our holidays in Melbourne, I used to sit on the gate post at my grand parents place in Doncaster and watch the occasional traffic go past on Doncaster Road.
A couple of miles to the east, past the apple orchards, at the end of Doncaster road, the densely timbered Dandenong Ranges rose in all their splendor.

Now, when I stand in the same place and I look in the same direction, all I can see is an unending vista of drab brick houses, concrete buildings and ceasless traffic for as far as the eye can see.
The magnificent trees on the ranges are gone.
Destroyed in the name of development.

My grandfather also had a holiday house in Boneo Road in Rosebud, a couple of hundred yards from the beach.
Around it were some fishermen’s houses and beyond them were miles of the low heath and scrub of the Mornington Peninsula.
Most of this is also gone.

Greater Melbourne is very roughly 80 kilometres across and about 100 kilometres north to south.
It covers some 8800 square kilometres, and this does not include the Bacchus Marshes, Werribees and Geelongs around it!

Perhaps three quarters of this enormous area is almost covered with bitumen, concrete, bricks and steel.
Its native plants, animals and trees are nearly all gone, replaced by foreign, introduced trees, shrubs, grasses, animals and birds.
Each year many more square kilometres of native forest, scrub, heath and grasslands are cleared and destroyed to make way for even more houses and development.
Yet, rarely, if ever, do we hear the Eco-fascists of the green movement raising their voices in protest at this destruction.
They, and their fellow travellers in Victoria’s government and bureaucracy save their venom and bile for the miners and farmers of Australia.

Iluka Resources will take decades to mine the area that an expanding Melbourne destroys in a single year
And yet, unlike the cities, the mined areas can and will be environmentally rehabilitated in a few short years.

And if we took the combined operational areas of all the mines in Australia, we could fit them inside of the greater Melbourne area.

Draw your own conclusions about the Green’s vitriol against the miners!

Based on Bureau of Statistics figures, the mines, farms and rural industries of Australia earn about seventy percent of Australia’s foreign exchange income.
The seventeen million people in the big cities generate only about thirty percent of Australia’s total foreign exchange income.
But, they probably spend more than three quarters of that total income on imported goods to keep themselves in the comfortable manner to which they have become accustomed.

These Bureau of Statistic’s figures on our foreign exchange earnings, show that the cities are totally unable to support themselves.
Without the mining, and rural industries and their foreign exchange earnings, and their massive subsidy to the big cities, there would an economic collapse in the cities that would make the Great Depression of the 1930′s look like a Christmas party.

Will the Green Eco-fascists and their fellow travellers in the state government and bureaucracy ever admit this? Some how I doubt it!

Their anti rural and anti mining ideological bias, their ignorance, their arrogance and their utter hypocrisy will prevent them from ever doing so!

As my mother use to say “There is none so blind as those who do not wish to see”.
—————————-

“There is none so blind as those who do not wish to see”.

Are you one of those Silly Filly or are you and your ilk just plain bigoted and Blind?

Did you listen to Andrew Bolt and Roy Spencer tonight. UHI is the problem. ENSO causes warming, the ‘pause’ was relevant in the the instrumental record. and all that while he’s had some 5 revision of UAH v6.0 and it is not validated. How much s..t science do you want in 15 minutes.

For AZ:UHI BEST:
We observe the opposite of an urban heating effect over the period 1950 to 2010, with a slope of -0.10 ± 0.24°C/100yr (2σ error) in the Berkeley Earth global land temperature average. The confidence interval is consistent with a zero urban heating effect, and at most a small urban heating effect (less than 0.14°C/100yr, with 95% confidence) on the scale of the observed warming (1.9 ± 0.1°C/100 yr
since 1950..)
The Spencer graph show on the Bolt Report is a well known statistical fabrication of baseline anomalies.
The pause in perspective.
Just so you and FLY have something to play with.

From mid 1950s to 1970, West Terrace went from a quiet suburban street to a main thoroughfare. It seemed to have done little to the max temperatures (maybe it would have kept cooling) but you can see the effect in minimum temperatures.

The Spencer graph show on the Bolt Report is a well known statistical fabrication of baseline anomalies.

I’ve seen first hand how dodgey the Berkley guys are. They are not ones to be casting stones.

‘Yet when members of opposing groups attempt to rebut such arguments, they are likely to respond with the same certitude, and with the same lack of awareness that they are being impelled to credit empirical arguments to protect their identities. This form of exchange — the signature of naïve realism — predictably generates cycles of recrimination and resentment.’

One of the most infamous sources linked by this site commented recently via another dodgy site WUWT:

“We should not only talk to each other here but also quietly let the outside world know the truth. The truth will prevail eventually, but the more we call out the peddlers of falsehoods the sooner it will prevail, and the fewer innocent people the terrible policy consequences of their falsehoods will kill.”

Pity he has to peddle pure statistical fabrication to make his point.

[And your evidence or argument that it's a fabrication is what? And you don't say. It would be nice if you could point to something to back up your opinion, otherwise you're only making an ad hom attack.] AZ

I’m surprised SF, that you have electricity connected to your cave, or are you pedalling a bicycle hooked up to a generator while using a plastic computer to type your nonsense?

If you’re still in a house, connected to the grid and all manner of “evil fossils”, driving a car (or using public transport) to work and have a plastic toothbrush, you’re a hypocrite – which is no different to any greenie. That’s not just MY observation.

It is odd, but few people realise just how inter-connected the whole world is. Let’s pick an example of what could be considered one of the simplest of tools that we use – a pencil. Just wood, with a graphite core. Simple, yeah? Maybe – but it is not possible for ONE person to make a pencil! In fact, for those who are horrified of making others work for you, the simple fact of buying a pencil means that you have forced (a.k.a. “employed”, in the real world) anywhere from 20 to 50 people to work for you.

Ah, SillyFilly , you do leave yourself so open to not only being shown to be just plain straight out wrong but to be hung out to dry scientifically and climatically, way, way out there on the fringes of the cult possessed.

I think the American term for dismembering your claims is, “that it is like shooting fish in a barrel”.
Made easier in your case by your much splashing around which gives us skeptics an even easier target to shoot at.

This Climate Scientist, Mojib Latif, one of the non english speaking European nation’s most prominent Climate alarmist Scientists and one of western Europe’s and Germany’s media go-to Climate Scientists for a couple of decades now, should be right up there amongst the Godheads of your pantheon of climate alarmist scientists.

And Sillyfilly, if you haven’t heard of Mojib Latif, you obviously haven’t been anywhere in the vicinity of anything that could be called “climate science” let alone “alarmist climate science ” for the last decade or more of your existence.
——-
A comment on Mojib Latif from the “NoTricksZone” blog;

Renowned climate scientist Prof. Mojib Latif used to often appears on television, radio and speeches all over Germany to spread the word of an impending human-made climate catastrophe.

One of the highlights of Latif’s many appearances was the CO2 “fingerprint” in the atmosphere, which according to Latif is supposed to confirm the greenhouse effect. Up in the stratosphere it is supposed to cool because heat would be trapped by CO2 in the troposphere below. This of course always impressed his gullible audiences.

Profound reversal

However, it now appears that the distinguished German scientist is now changing his mind profoundly. In a recent press release he and his fellow co-scientists in Kiel, Germany, conceded that the cooling is likely more a part of the 60-year PDO ocean cycle.

And the press release in english, below,on the paper written by four climate scientists including Mojib Latif;
And it would in any other circumstances be classified as carefully back pedalling out of the side door to avoid further embarrassment.

scientists of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, together with a colleague from Bergen (Norway), were able to demonstrate for the first time that natural fluctuations in water temperatures of the Pacific – which occur on decadal timescales – are directly related to the temperature of the tropical tropopause. “It has long been thought that human influences already affected the tropopause.
However, it seems that natural variability is still the dominating factor,” says Dr. Wuke Wang from GEOMAR, lead author of the study just published in the international journal Scientific Reports.
&
Thus, the current study contradicts earlier hypotheses about the temperature variability of the tropical tropopause. As early as in the late 20th century, scientists had seen a cooling trend there which began in the 1970s. They traced this observation back to anthropogenic causes, in particular the increase in greenhouse gases. “However, this assumption was based on a rather patchy data base and simplified climate models. Our study shows that the cooling of the tropical tropopause does not have to be a one-way street but could also be part of a natural fluctuation which extends over several decades,” Professor Matthes emphasized.
&
Anthropogenic climate change also has an effect on the temperature of the tropopause, and this effect could become more evident in the coming decades. “Only if we can clearly distinguish natural variability from anthropogenic influences, we can make reliable forecasts for the future development of our climate,” Prof. Matthes summarizes.

[ / ]

“Only if we can clearly distinguish natural variability from anthropogenic influences, we can make reliable forecasts for the future development of our climate,” Prof. Matthes summarizes.

So there you have it SillyFilly!

Some of the leading Climate Alarmist Scientists in the world for two or more decades past and located in the very heart of Climate Research in Europe have just admitted that they can’t, after nearly 30 years of very munificently funded Climate Science research, identify and separate out and distinguish and identify the natural climate variability from the hypothesized anthropogenic climate variability.

Thats if of course, such anthropogenic effects on the climate even exists.
—–
Of course this above is of no use to you if you don’t “follow the science”, something that has always been ferociously impressed on us skeptics, ad nauseum, by the “deniers of natural climate change” who demand that is what we must do but have failed to do and are therefore “deniers” of alarmist climate science.

Perhaps we are seeing right here, the quite astonishing levels of irrationality of the climate alarmist believers being brought on by the “polarization” in that headline quote of Jo’s

I have managed to acquire a Red Thumb for merely quoting from a press release by a group of some of the most prominent European climate Alarmist scientists from one of Europes major climate research institutions where they admit that they can’t distinguish natural variability in the climate from any anthropogenic created variability;

Only if we can clearly distinguish natural variability from anthropogenic influences, we can make reliable forecasts for the future development of our climate,” Prof. Matthes summarizes.

And therefore after all these decades of climate research the climate alarmist scientists can’t make any predictions on the future of the global climate until they can identify and separate the hypothesized anthropogenic created climate variables from the aeons old natural climate change variabilities.

The alarmists do indeed inhabit a very strange and seemingly very irrational world that will brook no challenge to their doomsday cult like beliefs of an imminent climate catastrophe for which it seems none of them have apparently made any visible provisions of any sort or at any level to ride through when that predicted doomsday climate catastrophe event arrives

SF, you fail to acknowledge one fact; people get to choose for themselves.

Your rant excludes this possibility, and instead attributes our belief as being dictated to us by “Big Oil”. You are projecting your own belief pattern, that of following what you believe to be a majority (i.e. 97% of scientists).

The reality is, we don’t believe CAGW is real, a problem, or needs fixing. It is our own choice to believe this, not that of Big Oil’s.

Silly,
You try to take some moral high ground while backing the side that wants to deny reliable grid power to africa, is OK with grannies and babies dying because their heating bills are unaffordable, and ascribes to burning food in our cars in spite of the fact that doing so has caused food prices to spike to a point that there are riots and deaths in some countries.

You support the idea of winding back CO2 levels and making the climate colder, both things that would (if you were unfortunate enough to be successful) result in substantially lower food production and possible NH crop failures (Just as well CO2 isn’t the control knob for temp you think it is) Famine and pestilence.

You think you are sooo morally superior!. But in actuality the side effects of your crusade are decidedly evil. Go live in central Uganda, then come back and tell me we shouldn’t expand electricity generation.

One important consideration is that, while cooler temperatures have been getting warmer, warmer temperatures have not been moving much, at all. Thus, the average temperature might rise. Certainly, in the UK, recent winters have been splendidly mild, while the summers have been depressingly unimpressive; the summer of 1976 (ironically, at the height of the ice age scare) is still looked back on with fond memory; there has been nothing like it since.

In the Little Ice Age (which, curiously, few seem to deny the existence of), there were years when there was no summer, when the ground was too cold to plough, any crop planted had too short a season to grow, and millions in Europe starved. Answer this, Silly: would you rather live in years without winters, or years without summers?

Yes but the lunatic Left have hijacked words and phrases to twist them to your their strange “standards”, if such sustained terrorism against language can be called that……

I notice the Left likes to hijack stuff , as it seems to have no original or useful thoughts of its own.

As Saul Alynski said – “the issue isnt the issue” – the decreed “issue” by Leftists is just the torjan horse to hijack a situation. Alynski understood that to white ant anything decent, you had to weaken its foundations. This explains why one of the aims of Communism is to weaken all moral standards ( in particular attacks on Christianity and Judaism which set up our western standards of behaviour ) and replace it with Nhilism.

Does anyone seriously believe the global warming (or whatever they call themselves thees days) doomsayers will ever change, in particular the politicians who see it as what it really is – namely another form of tax grab to fuel their ever increasing bad spending habits? I don’t. It will stop when we finally crash and burn then we’ll have real problems to deal with urgently.

“This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.” Kahan et al
Not many “best available science” advocates here.

Silly, collectives have gone down in history as the best way to destroy ideals, lands, economies. Never, ever trust a collective. Look to Korea, China, the old USSR. Even the Cambodian experience of recent times.

I am not selfish, and I am not anti-trees, oceans, clean air. I am against stupidity in the rush to prevent something that isn’t happening, and the destruction of miles of habitat in the name of Greater Good – windmills, solar arrays, monocropped “alternative” fuels. I am against the killing of birds, bats, whales and fish for the arrogance of a few who wish to see the world plastered with carcasses while they bask in their “moral” highness. I am against the starvation of millions of humans as a result of growing fuel, not food; as a result of lack of fuel for technology, agribusiness, basic lights to read by at night. The deaths by disease because the power required for clean water delivery and sewage disposal is not there.

Silly, I am a true environmentalist and humanitarian – unlike you and your colleagues.

Add to you list, the reason why disease isn’t such a big problem isn’t just the presence of hospitals and refrigeration for drugs. Much of ours comes from disease prevention of which a huge slice comes from underground water and sewerage but also because class 1 dwellings are largely environmentally sealed. When closed up there are few opening for the major disease vectors rodents and insects to reach us. When they do enter we can use simple insecticides and rodenticides to clear them after which it takes a substantial time for the area to be reinfested. Hand-built huts in Africa don’t even have glass in the windows or doors, which means they are under constant attack by disease bearing insects and rodents. This is why Malaria, Plague and Dengue still exist in the world lack of sealed housing because of the inability to use precision power tools in construction.

Admittedly we have walked away from the standard model on climate change, but as you know science is not about consensus.

Have you ever seen a UFO in real time? I once saw a fleet of them flying in a V shape formation at great speed, but science doesn’t recognise stuff outside groupthink so I’ve kept the story to myself to avoid ridicule.

Don’t know about you but I walked away from the standard (Scalar) model because it had NO HOPE of being correct and mathematically it cannot be reconciled with history. For example for the last 120 PPM per the IPCC, we have seen around 0.4 Degrees of global warming due to CO2 but the IPCC claim that the next 120 PPM rise will cause 3 degrees of warming due to CO2 in spite of the fact that the relationship between CO2 and Temp is LOGARITHMIC!

Simple boundary tests (Sniff tests if you like) show that AGW of the magnitude the IPCC and Greens claim is virtually IMPOSSIBLE. The model IS WRONG, the only argument left is WHY it is wrong. Climate feedback IS negative per satellite measurements and sensitivity can’t possibly be more than about 0.5C per doubling.

This IS in my view best available science and you can do it yourself on a simple calculator or in Excel.

There are too many things at stake for the climate worriers. For (cough, cough) the ‘climate scientists’, it bolsters their employment. For the Leftists, it bolsters their social change agenda. For the bankers/financiers, it bolsters their profits. For the (cough, cough) ‘progressive’ politicians, it bolsters their power.

I think One Nation have a few “Senators”who have their heads screwed on properly.Pauline may not be able to”Explain”herself,quite as well as the”Wentwurth Waffler”but she new what Howard and the Liberals,were up to.
One Nation may be the”New Conservative”party we need.

Interesting. OK, I am being lazy here but how is the data being analysed with regards to autocorrelations and individual changes. Is there any data on the question of what did they think 5 years before and who did they vote for 5 years before. These are presumably different (“randomly chosen”) voters at each time point.

The thing I want teaased out is cause and effect. Using the Republican party as the example – they moved from t=0, over time (t=1) to vote less in support of environmental issues (sorry that is a vague term as the graphs don’t particularise). Republican voters who did not like this move might become democrats or swinging at t=1 and the reverse for Democrats and swingers who like the Republican stance at t=1. Thus the voting intention change due to the policy shift.

I wont go through all the different scenarios that could explain this data. I just make this comment to point out that more rigorous analysis is needed to understand it.

They’re all picking on you Gee. We’re all lazy most of the time, it’s not a crime.

There might be a subset of swinging voter’s who vote Republican one year and Democrat the next. But I doubt their own values change all that much over time, they simply don’t have a political party that represents them; so they must choose between this one or that one, where neither party fits their own morals and standards.

Charts like this only tell the results, not the causes. Perhaps the study says something useful, but like yourself, I’m too lazy to read it. /Cheers

I did a quick read of the report, it’s based on Gallup poles each year since 2001. So its unlikely they’ll be able to answer your specific question.

Also the following quote kinda destroys the usefulness of their study;

Gallup employs a half dozen items dealing with basic findings from climate science, perceptions of media coverage and of scientists’ views of climate change, and personal concern about climate change. We begin with two dealing with fundamental aspects of global warming well established by climate science, but still frequently challenged by the organized denial campaign.

“There might be a subset of swinging voter’s who vote Republican one year and Democrat the next.”

This may be the closest to my, a some of my friends (and perhaps quite a few people) voting pattern, and yet it isn’t the whole story or reasoning. I vote for who I believe, based on what I can parse between-the-lines and from past history of the politician in question, will do what I see needing done. And that is based on careful (usually) attention to what is happening, not on what the media says is happening or what the media says I should be trying to change.

With issues, I do my best to balance all sides, and generally come down for the least-taxing and least-intrusive side.

I lean left in thought and action, but most of my voting, for as along as I have voted, tends to lean right.

The British beginning to cut the renewable energy subsidies,
Turkey building 25 new coal fired power stations.
Denmark limiting the building of new turbines except way out to sea.
And etc right in the heart of the global warming / climate change western European green cult.

Come now ROM, have you no sympathy for these poor (and getting poorer) sad, people?

Can’t you just empathize with their grief, their depression, their over-burdening ennui crushing their merger human spirit. As they tweet, blog, and farsebook each other in self-constructed echo-chambers of doom, while dreaming of the green world they’ll miss. Condemned to be forever fearfully thinking darkly of the approaching catastrophic menace of planetary climate oblivion destroying them and future generations.

When I was a young my long dead Dad said to me “Never trust the government. If you give them half a chance they’ll tax you for breathing.”
Oh how we laughed, what a ridiculous notion….

Forward a few decades and that is exactly what is being proposed with all this CO2 nonsense.

I have no empathy for the ignorant m-ass of people who worry about CO2, or oceans rising, or all the other claptrap they’ve inflicted on their minds. They can not be bothered to get some basic science knowledge, then they deserve all the depression they get — and then some!
Yep, these are the people who will vote for governments’ to tax them for breathing. These peoples’ credibility and imagination starts and stops at Big Government broadcasting.

So yes I’m happy they have internalized the real suffering they wish to inflict on the world by their actions. May they feel guilty and depressed till we are all (supposedly) vaporized in a large cloud of steam.

P.S. I have not had a coffee this year! Tea? Yes, gallons of the stuff.

“In 2022, if not before, Bavaria will face difficulties with its electricity supply,” Mario Mehren, Chairman of the board of Wintershall, said at the German Energy Congress in Munich. “At this time, when the last German nuclear power plants in Bavaria are taken off the grid, there will be an electricity generation shortfall of up to 4 gigawatts. Renewable energies cannot replace that, at least not at affordable and responsible prices.”

For all realists/pragmatists who have taken time to enquire about the matter,we await the other 75% to catch on .In all honesty I don’t think the majority care too much about all this frightening and such.Climate change? It’s just a model(bit like Camelot)

As long as you are magnetically aligned with the political policies of the day, as dictated by the environmental bureaucracy, you will be fine.

Only those of us, who persist in arguing that magnetism is a force of nature that cannot, and should not, be taxed, are in danger. We will be the ones, to be first against the wall, when the day of reckoning dawns.

It’s quite the paradox having such resolve to believe in CAGW, even more so the many qualified scientists that have shunned perhaps the very essence of their profession, objective reasoning, the recent example of Professor Brian Cox on Q&A highlights this despite good qualifications he completely dismissed the idea that data could be corrupted to fit a desired result, is it naivety that convinces him that such behaviour is reserved only in politics or big industry?

The belief seems part political, cult, social conformity, Malthusian, self destructive, even adolescent rebellion in it’s influence, while some jump on the bandwagon for social kudos (celebrities) others will always believe even if the earth turned into a giant snowball.

I once worked with a chap who was a devout Hare Krishna, a very pleasant person who’s answer to everything was “Krishna made it so” it didn’t matter the subject the answer was always that, I was happy for his peace of mind but it became tedious for us in the real universe.

The idolised Dan Kahan is not notorious for verbal tricks, slob terminology and trashy push polling…but he should be.

Sorry, not buying the old Cool Hand Luke explanation that there has been a “failure to communicate”. In this age of Publish-or-Perish and non-Kardashian models curiosity and observation have gone missing and the average punter is now noticing.

Apart from what’s already been pointed out, this research is blinkered on an international level. It thinks that Republicans are making choices to match their party but doesn’t look further afield to see if such a relationship exists elsewhere. The official UK line of the right wing party is or was 98% pro climate dogma but the public’s opinions more closely match those of the American public. The British have also been exposed to the hype a lot longer so more education is not ‘working’. The only thing that drives public opinion towards alarmism is bad weather. Funny how whenever they talk about climate change, they’re always talking about negative change. Nobody ever remembers the improvements since the Little Ice Age.

Surely on that first graph (figure 1) the ‘League of Conservation Voters (LCV) scores’ for the Democratic house correlates with the rise in CO2.
I believe the rise in League of Conservation Voters (LCV) for the Democratic house scores causes CO2 to rise.

“As a former Green my motivated reasoning was to find evidence to support the theory of a man-made crisis, but the harder I looked the less I found.”

The science view is to not believe anything you are told. A scientist is by definition a skeptic. A scientist does not believe in fairy stories.

This is brutal but the people who would lie to you are legion. The difficulty is with the caring person who is scared by what they hear and reacts without thinking. As people get older, they question what they are told. When someone walks into a police station to report a crime, there is a better than 50:50 chance they are the problem and young police learn this quickly. The target for the carpet baggers is the 15-25 year old age group, full of life and passion and wanting to make a difference. By the time they are 35, they are wary, defensive and questioning. Once burnt.

My own view is that I also wanted to see whether I could make a difference and hate being told what to think. The question which arose immediately was the primary premise, that mankind is increasing CO2. The question is whether this was true rather than obvious, coincidence as causality. So the natural question was whether we could actually measure the age of the air because fossil CO2 is hundreds of millions of years old. The answer was so simple, really old CO2 has no C14 and CO2 in the air has constant C14. If 50% growth in CO2 was fossil, C14 should drop 33%. Simple. Premise disproven.

So you can prove absolutely that there is no old CO2 in the air. Game over, I thought. My problem is that few people understand it, that you can measure the age of air. So the games continue with the arguments about whether CO2 actually heats anything, whether CO2 can be captured, whether windmills work. The answer is no. This should be a reason for celebration but it is all about emotive issues like Polar Bears and the weather in the Maldives and Robert Mugabe’s poor people who need cash to cope with Climate Change.

What I cannot believe is that up to 40% of Republicans believe this nonsense. Then you have Nobel Prize winner Al Gore who wrote an essay on television in Nixon’s campaign. Clearly a billionaire genius. Too bad the genius is in making money.

My experience on this point is that once people understand the proportionality of mankind emissions to totality of the entire c02 cycle, it comes as an epiphany. However, getting them to that point is difficult, and in some cases not possible, given the typical level of basic scientific knowledge and the ability to process the associated proportionality numbers.

One reason that confirmation bias is so easily reached among the left, is that the AGW meme being pushed is simple and easy to undertand:

*First scientist agree that c02 is a greenhouse gas. How sensitive, if at all, the climate is to this effect is beyond the understanding of typical person, but to the average person the climate must be rather sensitive to c02 if the ‘scientist” say so. Discussion of the details of climate sensitivity will sail right over their heads, and bore them. Leave the details up to the “experts”.

*Secondly, we must be adding significant c02 to the atmosphere, they think. Exactly how much they don’t know, but it must be “a lot”. It is easy to communicate the lie that it is “a lot”. Just watch the news and you see film of automobile exhaust pipes ejecting steam on a cold day or a cold morning during a “news” report about the weather, or urban pollution. And there are millions of planes, trains, and automobiles. Or they will see industrial smoke stacks shown ejecting steam against the setting/rising sun. How much it is in the overall scheme of things is left up to peoples imaginations.

*Thirdly if the two above assumptions are accepted, then its easy to believe the lie that we can control the climate, or at least mitigate the effects of climate change, by adjusting our life styles.

The truth is much more complicated. However, once the c02 cycle is understood it can really clear things up for those who want to see things more clearly, and can understand it.

The big secret in this epiphany is that 98% of all CO2 is in the ocean, not the air. This is 50x as much CO2 in the ocean as in the air. The IPCC know this but pretend it does not matter, that it just stays there and only the top surface gets involved.

This huge reservoir of compressed CO2 provides all the CO2, not the tiny human exhaust pipes and chimneys and the silly Bern cycle. What we humans do is irrelevant to CO2 concentration. Half the CO2 is totally replaced every 14 years from the ocean surface in total rapid equilibrium under Henry’s law. This is proven. The amount of CO2 which remains in the air is determined solely by the temperature of the water, not power stations and plants. That is real science. You cannot just increase the amount of CO2 in the air over land and expect it to stay there.

As an aside, I note that the area of land is 148.3Million km2. The area of the planet is 510 million km2. So in principle our land section is only 29%, far less than 1/3 of the total area. The seas are 3.4Km deep on average and at 1 atmosphere per 10metres, 340x as massive as the land. So this is a water world.

Now an observation. Unbelievably the ice on Antarctica is frozen fresh water an amazing 4km deep, 60% of the world’s fresh water, so it is really another deep but solid ocean on top of land like all other oceans. So at 14Million km2, the planet’s land surface is really only 134.3million km2 or 26%.

So if you want to know about the very thin layer of air, look to the massive deep oceans which contain almost all the CO2 and so much O2. Fish breathe! Half our O2 is generated in the ocean by photosynthesis from CO2. The oceans are where we and all life on earth originated and it is stuffed full of air, especially CO2 which is highly soluble at pressure. The greatest green house gas is water. Water controls our climates. Water covers our planet. Water blocks the sun on the way in and heat on the way out. Oceans are by far the greatest source of all CO2. For all our cars and factories and industry, we are insignificant in the cycle of CO2. It all vanishes, washed away by the sheer size of the oceans.

Of course, water is the greatest industrial pollutant, the other direct product of combustion. It is really the big problem with clouds, rain, sleet, snow, ice, fog and causes all our weather problems. It is the cause of all the climate extremes and you rarely get a storm without hot water being the sole cause. It causes icebergs. Like CO2, most of it is stored in the oceans too, so the oceans are the problem and terribly polluted by oxygen dihydride. Without water, there would be no problem with rising sea levels and tsunamis. Water was the major problem with Katrina and Fukishima. It should be taxed with a WTS, Water Trading Scheme.

Isn’t it funny TDef, how the obviously ludicrous idea of a water trading scheme was replaced with equally ludicrous CO2 because it just wasn’t so obvious that it was ludicrous. Both are substances THAT WE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT but because CO2 is invisible, it could be politically demonised.

I am just amazed at the stupidity of trying the reduce a gas that is the source of food for pretty much all life on earth. Trying to reduce CO2 is a crime against humanity in my book.

Yes, not just food, humanity is actually made almost entirely from just CO2 and H2O. A bit of calcium for bones, a six in ch nail for blood. Otherwise the same stuff as plants, trees, insects. Ashes to ashes. We are CO2, carbon lifeforms and if CO2 is pollution, we are walking, talking, reproducing pollution. Every breath we make. Even the Green adored by the Greens is just a long chain hydrocarbon molecule. The trees are just CO2. Get rid of the humans and the planet is saved, but for whom?

Possibly the hard thing to understand is that people are mystified by chemistry. Most have heard that there are 92 elements but do not think people are really made from them. Apart from Iron Man.

So many people have a real problem understanding that humans are made from two invisible gases and something like charcoal. It does not make sense. It is easier to think people are made from a some special materials made by elves or God. You cannot see an atom. Still, if we are not made from Carbon and water, what are we? Rocks? Aluminum? Magnesium? Xenon?

As seven billion people breathe out thousands of times today, the CO2 output from their internal combustion engines exceeds Australia’s entire total CO2 output many times. Food is solar power, stored as carbohydrates and turns back into energy, water and CO2, but who really believes it? Not many.

A Green Australian Government should ban CO2. Water too. Impossible? Silly? Amazingly the Greens did ban Chlorine.
No salt then or PVC pipes, but they would go without. So clever.

It’s still all about the Golden Rule – as in politicians solving self-identified problems, funneling billions of public funds to cronies who, in turn, give hundreds of millions back to the politicians who then fund their campaigns to keep power. Thus, those with gold, rule. Hasn’t changed much in a few thousand years.

The bigger truth they all miss is that polarization will only end when politics matches reality.

But of course. Yet it is equally the case that those pushing the catastrophic anthropogenic climate change thesis aren’t really interested in the climate. Their principal concerns are for money and professional prestige, or (in the case of politicians) for power. Therefore, reality is, to them, irrelevant — even an impediment.

When the public is faced with a choice: deal, as in fund action, with this year’s problems or deal with something that will save the planet a 100 years out, they will choose.
Of course, nations mired in poverty have built grand cathedrals.
Coercion & obfuscation can go a long way.
But I look forward to debates about the practical consequences of “green” expenditures.
A lot of us, in our personal lives, budget carefully when times are tight, and spend with enjoyment when they are not.
Perhaps opposite what we should do, but human nature.
Times are getting tighter.
I want to hear a political critter not form a safe seat go on record supporting 120 dollar a gallon green jet fuel when we have a readiness issue.
And if the wind farms fail there may be few safe seats. In many countries, especially the United States, the funding for middle class life has slowly eroded. This does not mean the quality of life has eroded – tho in some countries this may be true.
It is possible to convince folks, and/or for them to rationalize that a drop in real income compensated for by greater security and more leasure is a good trade, even if involuntary.

I will be hard to sell this if it’s cold, or the lights go out, or the power bill is the one we can’t afford, strictly for political reasons.

“Public opinion has a similar trend. Here are Gallup poll results since 1997. (The recent up-spike in Republican “belief” was recorded in March this year and is probably due to the record warmest US winter thanks to the El Nino. I expect that to revert to trend next year.)”

I think it is probably due to the increase in the propaganda we have seen since the US primary elections started.I was just getting used to reading my paper without being upset by another climate crises claim and now they show up every day.

Once an issue has been yoked to our core identities, we stop reasoning like scientists (gathering evidence, seeing where it leads) and start reasoning like lawyers (start with a conclusion, work backward to build a case). Yale psychologist Dan Kahan calls it“motivated reasoning”— “the unconscious tendency of individuals to process information in a manner that suits some end or goal extrinsic to the formation of accurate beliefs.” In this case, the “end or goal” is preserving commitments core to identity.

So someone outside the core skeptic community actually recognizes the problem. Now will someone act and call their bluff? I doubt it.

Jo, “As a former Green my motivated reasoning was to find evidence to support the theory of a man-made crisis, but the harder I looked the less I found.”

That was pretty much my experience, too. I didn’t start as a full-on Green, but certainly as an AGW-believer. But then I decided to find out for myself what was going on. The more I dug, the less there was.

Finally, after doing the work, I now know there’s no science at all supporting the AGW claim.

Ian, I just got tired of all the accusatory polemics, back in 2001 when the IPCC TAR came out. The drumbeat of guilt was relentless. But it had already become impossible to learn anything reliable reading newspapers. I wanted to find out whether the accusations were true, or not. The only way to learn was to read the primary climate literature.

Things became clear only after reading Soon, et al, (2001) “Modeling Climatic Effects of Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Unknowns and Uncertainties” Climate Research 18, 259–275, which listed the huge W/m^2 errors of climate models. I discussed their paper in my Skeptic article. It was immediately obvious that the IPCC could not possibly know what they claimed to know about the impact of CO2 emissions on climate.

As attitudinal context, just prior to looking at climate I had extensively checked the scholarly integrity of the work of Noam Chomsky, using resources at the Stanford University Library, and found he lies systematically. So, I had become suspicious of left-wing polemics in any case.

I did a little research on them, too, by the way. If you’re interested, you can read the outcome of that study here.

Left-leaning voters are dreamers, fantasising of their ideologically driven preferred outcomes. (Think vegans, vegetarians, socialists, Marxists, communists, environmentalists.) They seek Utopia, so are receptive to anything that would allow them and their world to be constructed along their oh-so superior world-view of how ‘humanity’ should live. They’re also control freaks who, given the chance, would impose their world view on others regardless of how those others feel. Hence no debating climate change!

Right-leaning people are free-market, democratic pragmatics. Does it work – yes? Great, let’s go with that. No? Then make a better version or reject it. (See the UK’s Brexit debate: the EU is a failed, anti-democratic car-crash, let’s leave and regain our democratic independence – versus imposed top-down state control from those who ‘know best’) Pragmatists seek discussion, encourage debate and demand proof; that’s how they became pragmatists in the first place and why they’re the exact opposite of the hemp-knicker wearing loons who refuse to engage with reality lest it spoil their fantasy.

cAGW has been falsified more times than Zsa Zsa Gabor had husbands yet she never lost the faith and kept re-marrying. Climate alarmists depend on half a dozen incorrect support-system theories to excuse their point-blank refusal to allow all and any evidence to derail their fantasy. It’s as if any excuse for them to keep the planet safe is worthy of the lies they perpetuate to advance their cause and – purely as a side-effect you understand – their careers, morally high-end social standing and bank balances. They occupy their detached from reality fantasy world because quite simply they cannot handle the truth, which doesn’t bode well for them because as we all know, eventually the truth will out.

Most developed Western democracies have been under the sway of more liberal governments in recent years. Those governments have poured immense public funds into reinforcing the CAGW theme and have used that invalid excuse to drive very expensive and ineffective policy. Simultaneously they have deliberately inhibited debate and worked to silence valid skepticism (the basis of real science).

In spite of that there seems little overall change in public opinion though the divide between liberal and conservative has widened. It gives me a sense of optimism. As long as citizens retain the right to vote for common sense we will eventually return to rational, science-based decision-making.

I am making no claims about whether conservative or liberal political views are more likely in general to be correct on matters of science. There are many examples of either side of the political divide making a botch of science or alternatively adopting valid science-based policy.

What it really needs is some semblance of relevance rather than just the same comment pasted and repasted across the blogsphere, no matter what the topic of the blog. I suppose he needs to do something with it now that he has spent all that money and time publishing it.

The slope of the line across the top of Figure 2 is the error in nuclear “binding energy” calculations of Weizsacker (1935) and Bethe (1936). That error obscured evidence of mass generated by neutron repulsion in atomic rest mass data of the 3,000 types of atoms that comprise all matter.

There is little or no hope for those who blindly believe the NWO”s Standard Models of reality. They surrender their ability to reason to join the so-called “97% scientific consensus” glued together with public research funds.

After Climategate emails started to awaken me to reality, I realized that George Orwell was right when he concluded in 1946 that a new technological matrix of deceit was arising from the ruins of WWII. Although dying from tuberculosis, he moved to the Scottish Isle of Jura to start writing “NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR“

Prescott S. Bush, the father of the elder President George Bush designed the plan after WWII for the National Academy of Sciences to construct and maintain a worldwide web of deceit by limiting public research funds to “scientists” who willingly joined the “97% scientific consensus” for Standard Models of Reality!

Only a little “sleight of hand” (shown by the slope of the line across the top of Figure 2) was required “to save the world” from possible nuclear annihilation.

I live in Holyhead, Old North Wales and within a five minute walk of the sea. There are structures there that go back a long way in time. There is absolutely no evidence of rising sea levels. Those who claim otherwise are lying but why they do this is a mystery to me. That’s why I read this site I suppose but they (for some reason) are flagrantly lying.

We have the CSIRO! Well qualified and fully funded career scientists and all the support they need for the hunting of the snark. Looking for something that isn’t there is their speciality.

No luck yet, despite 350 scientists spending years hunting various snarks and even having prestigious international conferences on things like ocean acidification, when none of the oceans are acid or could ever be acid through CO2, considering 98% of the CO2 is already in the ocean. Wonderful web sites and glossy brochures full of waffle though. Waffling is a defence when you cannot trap your snark.

«The experts and paid up researchers are scratching their heads trying to think of everything to fix this. …After three decades of propaganda, more propaganda pushes skeptics away. Badgering people with the 97% consensus only reminds them of how pathetically political and unscientific this debate is. Faking it up to a 99% consensus makes it worse. The consensus message only works on those prone to “follow the herd” and those people have all been reached already.»

Next January, I’ll be relocating to the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. …

As we communicated the scientific consensus on climate change, I also ran psychological experiments into the efficacy of consensus messaging. While we’ve debunked over 190 climate myths, we’ve also published the Debunking Handbook, a summary of psychological research into misinformation. Our Massive Open Online Cource on climate science denial is informed by a synthesis of cognitive psychology, inoculation theory and educational research.»

I came upon this while looking for a reference to the only true climate model.

Couldn’t let this sit unread so it was lifted: Pravda ?

Some real down to Earth science.

About 325,000 years ago, at the peak of a warm interglacial, global temperature and CO2 levels were higher than they are today. Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a few years to prepare for it.

The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of AGW.
The AGW theory is based on data that is drawn from a ridiculously narrow span of time and it demonstrates a wanton disregard for the ‘big picture’ of long-term climate change. The data from paleoclimatology, including ice cores, sea sediments, geology, paleobotany and zoology, indicate that we are on the verge of entering another Ice Age, and the data also shows that severe and lasting climate change can occur within only a few years. While concern over the dubious threat of Anthropogenic Global Warming continues to distract the attention of people throughout the world, the very real threat of the approaching and inevitable Ice Age, which will render large parts of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable, is being foolishly ignored.

There is a high degree of prostitution between Academics and Government that we have not seen before and as a result the politicians and Scientists are so disconnected with the people that they serve…
it is frightening

“Joules may be an appropriate metric, but it needs to be anchored to something. What is the carrying capacity of the ocean in Joules? How many joules per cubic meter of water does that amount to?”

That can be lots of Joules per cubic meter of water when freezing or melting! Lots of tables to look up values on the internet. Nothing on the internet about what that might mean!!! Let me try:
A Joule (storage of power) is a Watt (power) integrated (stored) over a time of one second. A completely inverse, or conjugate of that POV; is work also in the same confusing ‘Joule’ but now is ‘FORCE’ times “distance”. Now for the unwashed that are being scammed by the academics, just what the hell is ‘force’. The academics try to do that in terms of acceleration of mass (Mv^2/s^2). Well force is a ‘push’ or a ‘pull’ as a measure of ‘power’ (not to be mentioned outside of academia).
For us peons Power is the average ‘pull’ a standard horse can do while tied to a large tree while doing actually nothing. This value of ‘pull’ is 746 Watts, mostly being evaporated horse sweat as that horse is doing no ‘work’, just pulling ‘power’.
That same horse plowing a field does 746 Joules of ‘work’ each and every second, less some entropy, as the horse is still sweating Such ‘plowing’ is never storing power as Joules, it instead is converting power into ‘work’, actually, ‘Action’, a plowed field, in units of Joule-seconds, after many many seconds.
If you think this is hard to understand, please tie local and government funded academics to the pole and light the fire.
OTOH If you want me to try to decipher this scam, I remain willing to assist you in enjoying whatever kind of beer YOU THINK IS BEST!

Euan Mearns has highlighted the stupidity and futility of the decarbonising efforts by industrialised countries, especially those that have phasing out nuclear power. It spells it out so clearly that only greentard fundamenta1ists could argue for renewables.

Our energy, environment and finance ministers at both state and federal level should take note (but they won’t)

The untold – and terrifying – story behind the earthquake that devastated Nepal last Saturday morning begins with something that sounds quite benign. It’s the ebb and flow of rainwater in the great river deltas of India and Bangladesh, and the pressure that puts on the grinding plates that make up the surface of the planet.

Recently discovered, that causal factor is seen by a growing body of scientists as further proof that climate change can affect the underlying structure of the Earth.

Because of this understanding, a series of life-threatening “extreme geological events” – earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis – is predicted by a group of eminent geologists and geophysicists including University College London’s Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards.

“Climate change may play a critical role in triggering certain faults in certain places where they could kill a hell of a lot of people,” says Professor McGuire. Some of his colleagues suspect the process may already have started.

It sounds like a pitch for a Hollywood apocalypse-fest – indeed the movie 2012 featured the Earth’s crust collapsing after a rapid heating of the Earth’s core. The mechanism here is rather more mundane, though potentially no less devastating.

Evidence from the end of the last Ice Age has already shown that the planet’s uneasy web of seismic faults – cracks in the crust like the one that runs along the Himalayas – are very sensitive to the small pressure changes brought by change in the climate.
And a sensitive volcano or seismic faultline is a very dangerous one.

The disappearing ice, sea-level rise and floods already forecast for the 21st century are inevitable as the earth warms and weather patterns change – and they will shift the weight on the planet. Professor McGuire calls this process “waking the giant” – something that can be done with just a few gigatonnes of water in the right – or wrong – place.

——————————

This is as you can all see, a very, very, very serious situation needing vast amounts of funding to continue this critical to the Earth’s survival, research into the effects of climate change on the Earth’s seismic plates and its fault lines.

Please ensure that in sending the funding only large denomination notes are used as coins are too heavy and their weight may create another major Himalayan earthquake.
We are also calling for donations of soft slippers, equipped with climbing spikes please, to reduce the human walking impact on the crustal plates in the delicate Himalayan topography .
Our large team of Geologists, who were formerly Yeti hunters who couldn’t find any Yetis, but as there is more money in our geological project they all took a two day course in Katmandu on Himalayan geology and are now expert geologists who are doing extensive research on the delicate seismic and fault line topography of the massive Himalayan Mountain chain.

It is deeply disturbing to ourselves that there are so many deniers out there who are weeping with laughter at our unique research and the conclusions we have reached of the impact of climate change on the Himalayan seismic plates and fault lines.

As scientists doing research that is fundamental to the survival of the planet, such casual rejection of our critical research findings leaves all of us all feeling quite depressed, hopeless and dismal.

There is an obituary piece in The Times today (sadly behind a paywall) for James Cronin, a Nobel prize-winning nuclear physicist. Not sure why it caught my eye but it is a fascinating read.

This paragraph in particular I think is pertinent to the climate change debate:

““The discovery emphasises, once again, that even the almost self-evident principles in science cannot be regarded as fully valid until they have been critically examined in precise experiments,” said Cronin’s Nobel citation. In other words, Cronin’s reluctance to accept scientific principles without question helped him to make the intellectual leap and perform the necessary experiments that overturned an accepted view of physics — as well as set a new cornerstone principle that described asymmetry in the Universe.

Just heard that Turnbull has promised $300,000,000 to the South Sea Islands to “combat the effects of climate change”. That should help lift the depression out there. Not sure what it’s doing for the depression that is resulting from his lack of governance at home.

8 Sept: LA Times: California becomes a global laboratory in fight against climate change
by Chris Megerian and Liam Dillon (Times staff writer Sophia Bollag contributed to this report)
California will become a petri dish for international efforts to slow global warming under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday, forcing one of the world’s largest economies to squeeze into a dramatically smaller carbon footprint.
“What we’re doing here is farsighted, as well as far-reaching,” Brown said at a signing ceremony at Vista Hermosa Natural Park in downtown Los Angeles. “California is doing something that no other state has done.”…
“We’re going to have to make the change about three times as fast as we’ve done so far,” said James Sweeney, director of the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University…

Reaching the goal set by SB 32 could be a difficult task in a growing state. California has 38 million people now, with a gross domestic product of almost $2.5 trillion, making it the sixth-largest economy in the world.
By 2030, estimates from the Public Policy Institute of California and the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy show, the state could have 44 million people and an economy of nearly $3.5 trillion, but carbon emissions would need to be dramatically reduced.
The effort will require not only policies and innovations to make clean technology more available and affordable, but political acumen to prevent a public backlash to those policies…

“Whatever it’s going to take, it’s going to take battle, it’s going to take wisdom and it will take some balance that we don’t overdo it,” Brown said. “But I’m not afraid that we’re going to get to that point.”
Some business groups have already raised concerns. Allan Zaremberg, president of the state’s Chamber of Commerce, said the law doesn’t require “regulatory agencies to give any consideration to the impacts on our economy, disruptions in everyone’s daily lives or the fact that California’s population will grow.”…
Cap and trade has raised billions of dollars in recent years, but revenue from the program has slowed to a trickle, and it’s facing legal uncertainty from a years-long legal battle over whether the program amounts to an unconstitutional tax…

“Whatever it’s going to take, it’s going to take battle, it’s going to take wisdom and it will take some balance that we don’t overdo it,” Brown said. “But I’m not afraid that we’re going to get to that point.”
Some business groups have already raised concerns. Allan Zaremberg, president of the state’s Chamber of Commerce, said the law doesn’t require “regulatory agencies to give any consideration to the impacts on our economy, disruptions in everyone’s daily lives or the fact that California’s population will grow.”…
Cap and trade has raised billions of dollars in recent years, but revenue from the program has slowed to a trickle, and it’s facing legal uncertainty from a years-long legal battle over whether the program amounts to an unconstitutional tax…http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-jerry-brown-signs-climate-laws-20160908-snap-story.html

“By 2030, estimates from the Public Policy Institute of California and the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy show, the state could have 44 million people and an economy of nearly $3.5 trillion”

If they cut the power off, the economy will be cut, not increased. 2.5 trillion now, maybe half, or 1/3, that – and soon.

don’t know why the “Whatever it’s going to take” para got repeated, when i thought i was following it with this:

Brown said Thursday that he hoped California’s efforts would help change the minds of Republicans and businesses that have resisted climate policies.
“I don’t want to be partisan, but these guys deny science,” he said. “Anybody who lies like that should not be listened to. That’s all.”…

VIDEO: 8 Sept: NYT: Obama on Climate Change: The Trends Are ‘Terrifying’
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, MARK LANDLER and CORAL DAVENPORT
Climate change, Mr. Obama often says, is the greatest long-term threat facing the world, as well as a danger already manifesting itself as droughts, storms, heat waves and flooding. More than health care, more than righting a sinking economic ship, more than the historic first of an African-American president, he believes that his efforts to slow the warming of the planet will be the most consequential legacy of his presidency…

He acknowledged that his rallying cry to save the planet had not galvanized Americans. He has been harshly criticized for policies that objectors see as abuses of executive power and far too burdensome for the economy…
… in the summer of 2010, a cap-and-trade bill Mr. Obama had tried to push through Congress failed, blocked by senators from both parties.

“One would have hoped for transformational leadership, in the way J.F.K. would have done it,” said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany…

By the fall of 2010, Tea Party “super PACs” supported by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch had seized on cap-and-trade as a political weapon, with attacks that helped Republicans take control of the House.

Polls showed that few Americans thought of climate change as a high public policy priority, and the percentage of voters who accepted the reality that it was caused by humans had tumbled.
“There is the notion that there’s something I might have done that would prevent Republicans to deny climate change,” Mr. Obama said. “I guess hypothetically, maybe there was some trick up my sleeve that would have cast a spell on the Republican caucus and changed their minds.”…

Mr. Obama immersed himself in the scientific literature, which left little doubt that the planet was warming at an accelerating rate. “My top science adviser, John Holdren, periodically will issue some chart or report or graph in the morning meetings,” he said, “and they’re terrifying.”…

To his successor, Mr. Obama leaves an ambitious and divisive legacy: a raft of new emissions rules that promise to transform the United States economy but are likely to draw continuing fire from Republicans, and an aggressive — some say unrealistic — pledge made in Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050.
All of this, he acknowledges, could be undone at the ballot box. “I think it’s fair to say that if Donald Trump is elected, for example, you have a pretty big shift now with how the E.P.A. operates,” he said…

9 Sept: Phys.org: Laura Graham: Vital improvements needed to forecast impact of climate change on biodiversity
An international collaboration of 22 top biologists, including academics from the University of Aberdeen and led by Professor Mark Urban from the University of Connecticut, is calling for a coordinated global effort to gather much-needed biological information that will make climate change forecasts for biodiversity more realistic and precise…
Professor Justin Travis, Dr Greta Bocedi and Dr Steve Palmer from the University of Aberdeen have developed state-of-the-art computer software, called RangeShifter, which incorporates many of the biological processes missing in previous models.
This Aberdeen group secured funding from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and DIVERSITAS, to run a series of workshops that brought together modellers, field biologists and conservation biologists in order to identify the opportunities and challenges involved in using more complex models, such as RangeShifter, to forecast biodiversity responses to climate change…

Professor Justin Travis, University of Aberdeen: “An important start would be the establishment of Centres for Ecological Forecasting, each tasked with developing their own models. Then we can begin making the same comparisons between ecological forecasts as the climate community routinely does between different climate models. These centres would require teams of ecological modellers, computer programmers and, just as importantly, teams of field ecologists and evolutionary biologists working in a co-ordinated way to gather key data required by the models.”
Dr Bocedi added: “This is an exciting time.
***With sufficient commitment and investment, ten years from now we can have a set of global and regional ecological models providing forecasts for biodiversity that are as influential in determining how we manage our planet as the climate models have become.”http://phys.org/news/2016-09-vital-impact-climate-biodiversity.html

9 Sept: Guardian: Chris Stone: We won’t let politically motivated hacks silence us
Material stolen from Open Society Foundations in a cyber-attack is being used to embarrass and discredit us. These Watergate-style tactics can’t be allowed to succeed
Hackers are stepping up their cyber-attacks on American democratic institutions. The Open Society Foundations, the global philanthropy I lead, is among many to have been targeted. DC Leaks has posted over 2,500 documents reflecting our grant-making strategies over the last decade, prompting a flurry of press reports from far-right news sites in the US and around the world.
Earlier this summer, a shadowy organization called DC Leaks, believed by authorities to be a front for Russian operatives…

I’m sure all of us targeted by DC Leaks feel angry about the intrusion and worried about the damage it may do. Steal enough documents, and you’re bound to find some unguarded speculation and harsh judgments. But most of what DC Leaks is publishing, at least about the Open Society Foundations and our grantees, is work we’re proud to be doing. Indeed, all the targets of the hacks this summer – Democrats, Republicans, generals, newspapers and election officials – are champions of democracy…

Consider the “revelations” with which we at the Open Society Foundations have had to contend since DC Leaks stole documents from an online community of ours. One headline reads: “Soros Paid Al Gore MILLIONS to Push ‘Aggressive US Action’ On Global Warming.” Indeed, for over a decade the Open Society Foundations have supported several efforts to spur aggressive action on climate change…

Sept 2015: InsidePhilanthropy: David Callahan: Philanthropy vs. Tyranny: Inside the Open Society Foundations’ Biggest Battle Yet
The Open Society Foundations is bigger than you think. In fact, it may be the largest philanthropic organization ever built, with branches in 37 countries…
That budget is set annually by George Soros, who’s given away nearly $12 billion since he got into philanthropy decades ago. Nevertheless, thanks to his skills in financial markets, Soros—who recently turned 85—is now richer than ever, with a net worth estimated at $26 billion. The bulk of that fortune is slated to go one day to OSF, creating a massively endowed foundation that, in recent years, has been redesigned to exist in perpetuity…
Don’t look on OSF’s website for press releases touting new grants or a blog where staffers muse about their theories of change…
The foundation’s president, Christopher Stone, keeps a relatively low profile…
When he was tapped to lead OSF, he was teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School…
Rather, it seems the plan is for the foundation to just keep doing what it’s been doing, pumping out almost a billion dollars a year for democracy and human rights on nearly every continent in the world…http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2015/9/14/philanthropy-vs-tyranny-inside-the-open-society-foundations.html

the section of the dcleaks website which carried the Soros leaks was shut down recently & their twitter account suspended. don’t know if everything got copied elsewhere, but some stuff continues to come out.

read all the following if u can because i can rarely keep open any pro-Trump Breitbart page, much less copy & paste stuff there:

7 Sept: Breitbart: Aaron Klein: Leaked Soros Memo: How to advance Obama’s use of Executive Action
NEW YORK – Just prior to the November 2014 midterm elections, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations held a board meeting at which the organization discussed how it could further the use of President Obama’s executive action authority to bypass Congress during Obama’s final two years in office…
The details were contained in a 67-page hacked file…ETChttp://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/07/leaked-soros-memo-advance-obamas-use-executive-actions/

8 Sept: WDAY6 ABC: Obama sends letter about pipeline, but it’s not what opponents wanted to hear
By Rod Boshart, Cedar Rapids Gazette
DES MOINES — Opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline being built in Iowa got a long-awaited reply from President Obama this week but it wasn’t the response they wanted…
In their two letters to Obama, Fallon and others had praised the president for his “bold act of foresight and leadership” in rejecting the proposed Keystone pipeline and urged him to take similar action to halt the Bakken pipeline traversing 18 counties in Iowa.
In his Aug. 31 letter, Obama noted that his administration has “made great strides” in confronting climate change and noted that the federal government has strengthening so-called fracking regulations to protect public and American Indian lands.
“When it comes to protecting our planet, we have a responsibility to make smart, forward-thinking decisions that put our children’s future first,” the president said in his letter…

Obama went on to say “of course, we cannot complete the transition to a clean-energy economy overnight. We will continue to rely partly on fossil fuels — and while we do, safety must be our first priority” but he made no specific mention of the Dakota Access pipeline or taking any steps to intervene in the project.
“His response is disappointing to say the least,” Fallon said of the president’s letter.
“He didn’t say anything about it,” Fallon added. “I’m kind of sad to see somebody who claims to get the climate crisis and understands the importance of protecting the land and the water of our native people, and who professes to care about our farmers and landowners, it’s sad to see that there seems to be a complete disconnect.”…http://www.wday.com/news/4111509-obama-sends-letter-about-pipeline-its-not-what-opponents-wanted-hear